There’s an oxymoron for you: “Rich Poet.” But the new fortunes of Emirati poet Saif Al Mansouri prove that with talent, grit, and a live television audience, truly anything is possible. The UAE show “Millionaire’s Poet,” in its sixth season, awarded $1.3 million (the Nobel Prize. for comparison, is $1.2 million) to winner Al Mansouri, and perhaps something even more valuable – a global audience of up to 70 million, actually tuning in.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire Poet?
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)
Ursula K. Le Guin has died at the age of 88, according to the New York Times and Le Guin’s family. The prolific science fiction and fantasy writer — best known for her Earthsea series and The Left Hand of Darkness — explored themes like politics, gender, religion, and environmentalism. However, Le Guin wrote across genre and published over 20 novels, 100 short stories, 7 essay collections, 13 children’s books, 5 volumes of translation, and a writer’s guide. No stranger to awards, Le Guin most recently won the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Related Work for Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016. From our archives: The Millions interview with Le Guin from 2013.
What We Need Is
You may have heard about Google Poetics, which compiles Google Autocomplete entries that add up to a Horse_ebooks-like whole. At The Toast, Emma Jones takes these entries and writes them up as poetry proper.
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But all he eats is candy.
The history behind the iconic Esquire cover that depicts Andy Warhol trapped in a swirling vortex of tomato soup. Before photoshop! I have a reproduction of this particular cover hanging in my kitchen, and I have to tell you that I can’t bear to eat canned Tomato soup at all anymore.
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